AFAIK - "as far as I know"
bandwidth - the amount or rate of data exchanged with news servers
BTW: - "by the way"
catch - the percentage of posts actually received
closed servers - those that are accessed by subscription only
crackers - people with malicious intent who attempt to go where they are
not "supposed" to, and those who attempt to defeat safeguards
crack - a program that disables the protection features of another program
or the instructions required to do so
deleters - people who delete other people's posts
ECP - excessive cross-posting - cross-posting to an excessive number of
newsgroups, often off-topic in some, often commercial in nature.
Sometimes mistakenly called SPAM.
EMP - excessive multiple posting - posting essentially the same content to
the same newsgroup(s) multiple times, usually by accident or in a
misinformed attempt to "make sure that the post gets through".
Sometimes mistakenly called SPAM.
FAQ - frequently asked questions
flame - a derogatory post made as a follow-up to a post that has offended
the flamer
flame bait - a post that almost asks to be flamed
flooding - posting large binary files in a large number of small posts
FWIW: - "for what it's worth"
hackers - people with innocent intent who attempt to go where they are
not "supposed" to, and those who attempt to defeat safeguards
hierarchy - newsgroups of a common prefix such as "alt" or "alt.binaries"
HTH - "hope that helps"
IM[H]O - "in my [ humble ] opinion"
ISP - information service provider - a somewhat ambiguous term that includes
the service that your modem connects to, the NNTP servers, and several
other servers
latency - the period of retention before articles are expired
message thread - a series of posts where each is a follow-up to an earlier
post
newsfeed - the server that accumulates posts from uplink news servers and
newsfeeds, and distributes them to downlink servers and feeds.
NNTP - Network News Transport Protocol - Usenet news
open servers - those that allow anyone to use them
OTOH - on the other hand
ROTF - rolling on the floor [ laughing [ my a** off ]]
ROTFL
RORFLMAO
RTMF - read the f***ing manual
spam - posting to multiple newsgroups, usually off-topic and commercial.
Some mistakenly call anything they object to "spam".
TIA - thanks in advance
trojan - a program that pretends to be a desired program, but when run, does
something undesirable
troll - a post, usually provocative or controversial in nature, intended to
evoke a lot of responses. May be something of a "post a followup with
your email address" or "all homosexuals should be shot" nature.
Usenet - the network of servers that distributes news posts
virus - a modification made to computer programs that causes something
undesirable to happen. An "infected" program will infect other
programs, the boot sector, or other areas of the hard drive or PC.
Most viruses lay dormant for a period to mask their origin, while
they proceed to infect other areas of the PC. Documented virus
attacks range from increasing the sizes of files and displaying
irritating banners to reformatting the hard drives, rewriting the
BIOS CMOS RAM, and destroying the PC monitor.
warez - actually the "alt.binaries.warez" hierarchy. These newsgroups are
dedicated to the propagation of copyrighted or licensed software in
violation of the copyright or license.
WTF - (What the F***